Results tagged “astorcenter”

     

Last night at the Astor Center was the Alinea Experience, an event that brought the staff and a few dishes from the Chicago restaurant—named best in the country by Gourmet in 2006—to New York. Stations were set up around the space, each with a different Alinea bite to try. In one room was the restaurant’s “Black Truffle Explosion”: a sort of deep dish ravioli nested in a spoon. It was filled with warm truffle juice and butter; then topped with sliced black truffle, parmesan, and a small bit of romaine. Elsewhere, crispy-chewy dollops of spiced cider meringue filled with apple and foie gras were held up in a basket made of thin wires, a prime example of the restaurant’s unusual serviceware. The meringues looked like halves of a hard-boiled egg, only centered with square yolks.

Food world celebrities gathered at the Astor Center last night for a lively discussion on the phenomenon of celebrity chefs. Andrew Carmellini, Gwen Hyman, David Chang, Gail Simmons of Top Chef, and Mitchell Davis of The James Beard Foundation all weighed in on the celebrity craze, which has infiltrated kitchens everywhere like roaches. Only recently, some argued, has the idea of the celebrity chef become a prominent force in American culinary culture. Customers take digital pictures of every entrée, kids trade Iron Chef results like they were baseball statistics, and weirdos in Helsinki post wistful paeans to Tom Colicchio on Top Chef fansites. Some soundbites from last night:

Simmons on the pre-Top Chef world: “When I told my Mom I was going to be on a reality show, I had to convince her that I wasn’t going to be tied to a tree on an island in a bikini, eating maggots.”

Continue reading "Celebrated Chefs Discuss Celebrity at Astor Center"

Andrew Carmellini was most recently the chef at A Voce, which was awarded three stars by the Times. He left that restaurant in June, and is currently looking at spaces to house his next restaurant project.

Acclaimed chef Grant Achatz, who recently put out a deluxe cookbook called Alinea (named for his Chicago restaurant), will be making a few NY appearances in the upcoming weeks, most notably a scaled Alinea dinner at the Astor Center on November 6th. At $225 a head, the price is steep, but each guest receives five courses (including ‘hot potato, cold potato;’ above left) from the restaurant, and some crazy-ass Champagne.

Mark Bello wants to teach you how to make a perfect pizza at home. With fresh dough and carefully selected local and Italian ingredients, Bello makes delectable thin-crust pies using his standard home oven in Chinatown, or, through his catering and cooking class company, Pizza a Casa in your home oven as well. He spreads the pizza gospel throughout the city teaching classes at the likes of Murray's and Astor Center and at private events.

The knives have barely cooled off from the heated Top Chef Chicago contest, but that Top Chef Lazy Susan just keeps spinning. Amidst news that the next season of the high-stakes cooking show will soon start filming right here in New York City, Eater is pushing a rumor that the cheftestants will be housed in Williamsburg. But if stalking the stabby streets of Billyburg isn’t your speed, you can get guaranteed access to past Top Chef stars at the Astor Center, which is hosting a series of cooking classes starting July 7th. Each class costs $195 and gets you a book, cooking demo, a three course "signature" meal, and a chance to stargaze at chefs like Sam Talbot and this year’s winner Stefanie Izard. [Via Grub Street]

Cocktail wizard Dave Wondrich used a Boston shaker as a time machine when he taught a room full of people how to make old-school drinks. Real old school--some of the libations that the author of Imbibe whipped up haven’t been made for more than 100 years.

Whether you call them variety meats, off cuts, or simply offal, hearts, tripe, tendons and the like aren’t the first things that spring to mind as fit for a gourmet feast.